A Radio Flare in the Long-lived Afterglow of the Distant Short GRB 210726A: Energy Injection or a Reverse Shock from Shell Collisions?

Autor: Genevieve Schroeder, Lauren Rhodes, Tanmoy Laskar, Anya Nugent, Alicia Rouco Escorial, Jillian C. Rastinejad, Wen-fai Fong, Alexander J. van der Horst, Péter Veres, Kate D. Alexander, Alex Andersson, Edo Berger, Peter K. Blanchard, Sarah Chastain, Lise Christensen, Rob Fender, David A. Green, Paul Groot, Ian Heywood, Assaf Horesh, Luca Izzo, Charles D. Kilpatrick, Elmar Körding, Amy Lien, Daniele B. Malesani, Vanessa McBride, Kunal Mooley, Antonia Rowlinson, Huei Sears, Ben Stappers, Nial Tanvir, Susanna D. Vergani, Ralph A. M. J. Wijers, David Williams-Baldwin, Patrick Woudt
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: The Astrophysical Journal, Vol 970, Iss 2, p 139 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1538-4357
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad49ab
Popis: We present the discovery of the radio afterglow of the short gamma-ray burst (GRB) 210726A, localized to a galaxy at a photometric redshift of z ∼ 2.4. While radio observations commenced ≲1 day after the burst, no radio emission was detected until ∼11 days. The radio afterglow subsequently brightened by a factor of ∼3 in the span of a week, followed by a rapid decay (a “radio flare”). We find that a forward shock afterglow model cannot self-consistently describe the multiwavelength X-ray and radio data, and underpredicts the flux of the radio flare by a factor of ≈5. We find that the addition of substantial energy injection, which increases the isotropic kinetic energy of the burst by a factor of ≈4, or a reverse shock from a shell collision are viable solutions to match the broadband behavior. At z ∼ 2.4, GRB 210726A is among the highest-redshift short GRBs discovered to date, as well as the most luminous in radio and X-rays. Combining and comparing all previous radio afterglow observations of short GRBs, we find that the majority of published radio searches conclude by ≲10 days after the burst, potentially missing these late-rising, luminous radio afterglows.
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